Scottsdale's Don & Charlie's restaurant is a sports hub

What do you make of a restaurant that is all about autographed baseballs, ribs, steaks and frog legs?

If you're Don Carson, you make a hall-of-fame play with a place called Don & Charlie's.

His ribs, steaks and chop house in downtown Scottsdale, with its trove of sports collectibles, is a shrine of spring-training baseball in March and a destination for simple Chicago-style food year-round.

On a recent rainy Monday night, Carson had a full restaurant and a standing-room-only crowd of middle-age baseball fans in his lounge. Outside at the valet stand, a sport-utility vehicle sported an Arizona license plate with "CHI16IN," a reference to the mushy 16-inch softball used in Windy City softball leagues.

"We try to make people happy and hope they enjoy their experience," Carson said of the restaurant's enduring appeal over the past three decades. "While the memorabilia is eye appealing, if you got horrible food you wouldn't come back."

Customers keep coming back for a lineup that includes prime rib, barbecue ribs, steaks and chicken.

Chicago Cubs fan M.J. Starshak has been coming to Cactus League games and Don & Charlie's since 1999 for the food and camaraderie.

"It's lively and energetic," she said. "People come from the ballgame and they're used to cheering and being rowdy."

Don & Charlie's patrons know sports and good food, and it's not uncommon for players or coaches to show up at the restaurant, Starshak said. She spotted Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee from her seat in the lounge.

"This is a place that doesn't try to be what it's not," Starshak said. "It's not a nightclub. It's not small plates or tapas. They've stuck with what works."

Don & Charlie's defies trendy Scottsdale. It has outlasted flashy newcomers and the Pink Pony, another downtown steakhouse that New Yorker baseball writer Roger Angell once called the "best baseball restaurant in the land."

Charlie Briley's Pink Pony was a baseball watering hole for more than 30 years when Don & Charlie's was just a rookie steakhouse in 1981. Briley's widow, Gwen, closed the Pony last August after an economic slump killed it.

Briley said she is trying to find a buyer to revive the restaurant's legacy as a postgame hangout for baseball fans, coaches and players.

At Don & Charlie's, a mile north of Scottsdale Stadium, that baseball tradition endures. It is a 450-seat restaurant and museum of baseball and sports collectibles - signed balls, bats, jerseys, photos and magazine covers.

"We had nothing when we started - blank, zero, zilch," said Carson, who has a resemblance to radio raconteur Garrison Keillor.

Now every inch of Carson's 12,000-square-foot restaurant is covered with mostly baseball items, but also football, basketball and hockey memorabilia.

Carson has more than 700 baseballs in lighted, glass cases, 82 jerseys and hundreds of magazine covers signed by sports stars.

He saves magazines with cover shots of sports stars in case they show up.

"I'm an optimist," he noted.

In 1996, Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith obliged Carson with his autograph on a GameDay magazine from years earlier.

A 1998 Vanity Fair cover with Jerry Seinfeld is tucked away in his office just in case.

Carson's collection also spans lesser known players, along with coaches, sportswriters and politicians. Vice President Joe Biden, with a nearly full head of hair, signed a publicity shot for Carson in 1992 when he was a senator.